Noble Jews, you who decided long ago not submit to the domination of the Romans or to that of any other nation and to obey only God, Who alone has the right to command men, now the time has come to demonstrate by your acts that your heart truly nourishes these feelings. Until now, we have been exposed to all types of danger to liberate ourselves from any domination. Consequently, let us beware of dishonoring ourselves by submitting to the cruelest servitude that can be imagined and that awaits us if we fall into the hands of the Romans alive, we who were the first to shake off their yoke and the last to still display the courage to hold out against them. We would not become unworthy of the grace that God grants us to be able to die willingly and gloriously as free men, a happiness that those who cherished the hope of being invincible have never known. The enemy desires nothing more than to hang us alive. As great as our resistance will be, we will not be able to avoid an onslaught. Nevertheless, the Romans cannot prevent us from denying them our lives by giving ourselves a noble death, ending our days together with the people who are the dearest to us...

We have been the only ones among the Jews to think that we could preserve our liberty, attempting to persuade the others to imitate us, as if we too were not responsible for the transgressions that have brought down the wrath of God and as if we alone were innocent. Now you see how God, confounding our folly, crushes us with evil even more incredible than our hope was ridiculous and extravagant. For what would the strength of this place have served us, which skill combined with nature seemed to make impregnable, the great quantity of arms and all that was necessary to sustain a long siege? Can we still continue to doubt that God wants us to perish, after having seen the fire that the wind carried towards our enemies turn against us and burn the wall that constituted our defense? These expressions of God's anger cannot be attributed but to the horrible crimes, which we have committed with such fury against the members of our own nation, and since we cannot avoid punishment, wouldn't it be better to bow down to Divine justice and take our own lives rather than wait for the Romans to be our executioners after having vanquished us? The punishment that we will inflict upon ourselves will be less severe than the one we deserve because we will die with the consolation that our wives have been spared dishonor and our children enslavement and that we have been given, in spite of our misfortune, an honorable sepulcher under the ruins of our homeland rather than enduring a long captivity. And so that the Romans have the displeasure of finding the sole spoils of our dead bodies, it is my opinion that we should set the fortress and the silver that it contains on fire, sparing only the rations to show them that it is out of dignity and not out of necessity that we preferred death to servitude.

Eleazar speaks at length about the agony endured by the soul imprisoned by the body, insisting upon the immortality that awaits it upon its liberation. He then praises the religious and national character of his audience by detailing the persecutions that are the lot of their coreligionists in Palestine and elsewhere. He concludes his harangue in these terms:

What remains of this great people except the wretched old men who water the ashes of the holy Temple that in the past was the source of our happiness and our glory and the few women that our conquerors are waiting to subject to outrageous behavior thousands of times worse than death? Envisioning such terrible misery, who can still wish to see the light of day, assured of living without having anything to fear? In other words: who would want to be so faint-hearted and an enemy of his homeland that he would not consider it a great misfortune to still be alive and not at all envy the happiness of those who died before having seen the Holy City utterly overturned and our sacred Temple totally destroyed in a sacrilegious conflagration? If up until now, we have been sustained by the hope of being able to take revenge in some manner on our enemies by courageously resisting, this hope has vanished. Why delay running to our own deaths while we still have the possibility and of granting it to our wives and to our children since this is the greatest kindness we can do them? We were born to die: it is an inexorable law of nature to which all men, however happy and healthy they may be, are subject. But our nature does not at all oblige us to suffer the outrage of servitude, to see, in our cowardice, the honor of our wives and the freedom of our children ravished when it is within our power to spare them through death. After having heroically taken up arms against the Romans and scorned the offer they made us to spare our lives if we would accept it from them, what kind of treatment could we expect from their resentment if we fall into their hands alive? The strength and the vigor of the healthy would only prolong their agony and the oldest would not be pitied less because they would have greater difficulty enduring their agony. We would see our wives carried away into captivity and would hear our children, irons at their feet, imploring us in vain for help. Who is preventing us from saving ourselves from servitude while we can freely use our arms and our swords? Then let us die with the people who are dearest to us rather than live as slaves. They beseech us to do so; our laws order us to do so. God has imposed the obligation and the Romans will not seize anything more. Let us waste no time in making them loose the hope of triumph over us and may the astonishment of being unable to vent their rage on dead bodies compel them to admire our nobility.

F. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, VII, 34

The Romans who expected fierce resistance only found the bloodstained bodies of 960 men, women and children.
A Roman garrison occupied Massada until 111. A series of earthquakes caused the collapse of most of the buildings. In the 5th and 6th century, some monks inhabited cells scattered on the site as well as in the caves in the surrounding area. They built a small church paved with mosaics whose vestiges survived the wear and tear of time and sand. After their departure, the site remained deserted until some travelers and scientists rediscovered it.

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[The history of Massada] [Eleazar's speech] [The site of Massada] [A shelter against the heat] [Willful destruction]

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